1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging device, and in particular a shooting device that assists in causing a moving person to be within a shooting range.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-112550 describes specifying an object of interest within a field of view by an object specification device, tracking the specified object region, indicating the position of the object region with a pointer, and if tracking the object region is failed such as where the object region is moved outside a screen, displaying an indicator warning of it.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-163600 describes recognizing the face of a person and operating controlling pan/tilt or zoom controls for moving a camera position in the horizontal/vertical directions or forward/backward directions to track the face of the person.
If a person to be shot is moving, it is required to move camera according to the movement of the person of interest such that the person is within a shooting range and is also required to operate a zoom key to determine the angle of view depending on a movement direction of the person of interest, and therefore framing has been laborious work.
To resolve this, Although Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-112550 suggests an imaging device which tracks an object region specified by an object specification device, this imaging device is intended to track the specified object region and therefore has a problem that it does not directly track the person to be shot.
Although Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-163600 suggests a shooting method of recognizing the face of a person and operating pan/tilt or zoom controls of a camera to track the recognized face of the person, the shooting method requires the camera to be mounted on a pan/tilt or zoom driving device (motor pan head) and can not be applied to typical portable cameras.
In view of foregoing, it is an object of the present invention to provide an imaging device that can assist to facilitate framing when a user shoots a particular person while following the person and can improve usability for a user.